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If all 2030 climate targets are met, the planet will heat by 2.7℃ this century — Corals will not likely survive more than 2℃ global warming. Credit: Shutterstock

If nations make good on their latest promises to reduce emissions by 2030, the planet will warm by at least 2.7℃ this century, a report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has found. This overshoots the crucial internationally agreed temperature rise of 1.5℃.

Released today, just days before the international climate change summit in Glasgow begins, UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report works out the difference between where greenhouse emissions are projected to be in 2030 and where they should be to avoid the worst climate change impacts.

It comes as the Morrison government yesterday officially committed to a target of net-zero emissions by 2050. The government made no changes to its paltry 2030 target to reduce emissions by between 26% and 28% below 2005 levels, but announced that Australia is set to beat this, and reduce emissions by up to 35%.

The UNEP report was conducted before Australia’s new 2050 target was announced, but even with this new pledge, global pledges will undoubtedly still be short of what’s needed.

The report found global targets for net-zero emissions by mid-century could cut another 0.5℃ off global warming. While this is a big improvement, it will still see temperatures rise to 2.2℃ this century. If we don’t close the global emissions gap, what will Australia, and the rest of world, be forced to endure?

Pledges are falling short

As of August 30 (the date the UNEP report reviewed to), 120 countries had made new or updated pledges and announcements to cut emissions.

The US, for example, has set an ambitious new target of reducing emissions by 50–52% below 2005 levels in 2030. Similarly, the European Union will cut carbon emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.

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The Power of Lo-TEK: A Design Movement to Rebuild Understanding of Indigenous Philosophy and Vernacular Architecture

November 8, 2021

The Power of Lo-TEK: A Design Movement to Rebuild Understanding of Indigenous Philosophy and Vernacular Architecture

A Mythology of Technology: Stemming from the Greek mythos, meaning “story of the people,” mythology has guided mankind for millennia. Three hundred years ago, intellectuals of the European Enlightenment constructed a mythology of technology. Influenced by a confluence of humanism, colonialism, and racism, the mythology ignored local wisdom and indigenous innovation, deeming it primitive. Guiding this was a perception of technology that feasted on the felling of forests and the extraction of resources. The mythology that powered the Age of Industrialization distanced itself from natural systems, favoring fuel by fire.

Today, the legacy of this mythology haunts us. Progress at the expense of the planet birthed the epoch of the Anthropocene—our current geological period characterized by the undeniable impact of humans upon the environment at a global scale. Charles Darwin, the scholar and naturalist who is seen as the father of evolutionary theory, said “extinction happens slowly,” yet 60% of the world’s biodiversity has vanished in the past 40 years. Coming to terms with an uncertain future, and confronted by climate events that cannot be predicted, species extinctions that cannot be arrested, and ecosystem failures that cannot be stopped, humanity is tasked with developing solutions to protect the wilderness that remains and learning how to transform the civilizations we construct. While we are drowning in an Age of Information, we are starving for wisdom.

Columns of bundled reeds are prestressed by insertion into the island at opposing angles, then bent and tied into arches. Photo by Stephen Foote.

Built entirely of qasab reed without mortar or nails, reed islands and houses can last up to 25 years. Image created by Julia Watson and Berke Yazicioglu.

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Zero Carbon Sooner—Revised case for an early zero carbon target for the UK

November 7, 2021

Zero Carbon Sooner—Revised case for an early zero carbon target for the UK

Cover image: Anthony Gormley’s ‘Another Place’ in Liverpool; photographed by Donald Judge / flickr.com (CC-BY 2.0); modified

Summary

This paper is an update of an earlier briefing note[1], revised to take account of new findings from the IPCC’s updated 6^th Assessment Report (AR6). The broad aim of the paper is to establish how soon the UK should aim for (net) zero carbon emissions. The paper first derives a ‘fair remaining carbon budget’ for the UK. It then analyses a variety of emission pathways and target dates for their adequacy in terms of remaining within this budget.

A first key finding is that a target date for zero carbon is not sufficient in itself to determine whether the UK remains within its carbon budget. Policy must specify both a target date and an associated emissions pathway. A second key finding is that the sufficiency of these targets and pathways depends crucially on whether emissions are accounted for on a ‘territorial’ basis or on a ‘consumption’ basis.

For a linear reduction pathway not to exceed the remaining carbon budget the net zero target year would have to be between 2027 and 2032, depending on the accounting framework. For a target year of 2050, the average rate of emission reductions must lie in the range 17-27% if the UK’s fair budget is not to be exceeded. As measured on a consumption basis, these rates would require absolute reductions approaching 95% of current carbon emissions as early as 2030. Consequently, this paper argues in favour of setting a UK target for net zero carbon emissions no later than 2035, with a maximum of around 5% of the mitigation effort achieved through negative emission technologies.

Download

The full working paper is available for download in pdf (1.4MB). | Jackson T 2021. Zero Carbon Sooner…

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Why 4°C?

November 7, 2021

Why 4°C?

Climatologists say that civilization can’t survive global warming of 4^oC over the pre-industrial average. Some climatologists even say that civilization can’t survive 3^oC. A temperature increase of 4^oC over the pre-industrial average sounds fairly trivial so why would that cause civilization to collapse?

First, for Americans, a 4.0^oC temperature increase corresponds to a 7.2^oF temperature increase. Maybe that still doesn’t sound too bad but it’s a big problem because the 7.2^oF increase is an average over the globe and the temperature increase will not be homogeneous.

Some places will warm more than 7.2^oF and some places less than 7.2^oF. The regions that will warm substantially more than 7.2^oF include high latitude regions and large landmasses. We can see that happening already with the global temperature change over the last 50 years (See Figure 1):

chart1

Figure 1: Global Temperature Change from 1951-1980 to 2011-2020 (From NASA)

Figures II and III are projections of future warming across the globe:

chart2

Figure II: Average annual air temperature change (°C) at the Earth surface for two scenarios of future climate relative to the average of temperature between 1980 to 1999

chart3

Figure III-Warming during days and nights (Maps from NASA)

Not only will temperatures be higher in the future, but precipitation patterns will change over time, illustrated by predictions from the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research shown in Figure IV:

chart4

Figure IV-Predictions of future precipitation changes from the National Center for Atmospheric Research

Hotter and drier conditions will make growing food more challenging. As it is now, a substantial amount of agricultural production in the U.S., as well as in other countries, takes place in regions that rely on irrigation, particularly in the southwestern U.S. and the Great Plains. The water for irrigation comes from both surface water and aquifer sources.

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Degrowth and Decolonisation in the Red Zone

November 6, 2021

DEGROWTH AND DECOLONISATION IN THE RED ZONE

Hello world. Welcome to Glasgow. Welcome to Scotland. We are drawing on Glasgow’s radical past to inject hope and urgency into the moribund COP process.

YOUR VISION OF our country may be an idealised one of lochs brimming with salmon and glens filled with deer, but in reality we’re a petro-chemical economy being held ransom by the British State. Our most famous icons and exports – our salmon and deer and grouse – are really symbols of a country disfigured by landed power. We remain a semi-feudal nation with one of the most unequal distributions of land ownership in the world.

In Gaelic, Glasgow means ‘Dear Green Place’, but Glasgow was also known from the 19th century as the Second City of the Empire, a city that became synonymous with massive expansion, global trade, industry, invention, and shipbuilding.

For almost 200 years, the statue of the celebrated Scottish inventor and engineer James Watt has stood in George Square. Every schoolchild is taught about the invention of the steam engine in 1776, which was fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution across the world. What’s less well known is that Watt’s father was a slave trader, a colonial merchant who subsidised his son. The development of the steam engine was funded by slavery. Watt himself was involved in colonial commerce and played a direct role in the trafficking of enslaved people.

With Glasgow playing host to the COP in 2021, we have historical symmetry. It’s more of a loop than a continuum; as the world faces climate catastrophe, the same city that was pivotal in the Industrial Revolution, colonisation, and Empire is the city that must now be the pivot towards decolonisation and degrowth.

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Janet Yellen Admits The “Net Zero” Grand Reset Price Tag Will Be $150 Trillion

November 6, 2021

Janet Yellen Admits The “Net Zero” Grand Reset Price Tag Will Be $150 Trillion

For years, the climate change lobby was laser-focused on just one aspect of the “climate change” crusade: the end – which supposedly is some world where the temperatures no longer rise due to fossil fuel emissions (because we now live in a world of global warming as scientists agree, not to be confused with the global cooling hypothesis that emerged in the 1970s, when many were even warning of a new ice age) justifying the means. Meanwhile the “means”, or the final cost to taxpayers of all that endless, tedious virtual signaling, was almost never touched upon for a reason – as we first explained three weeks ago, the bill for getting the world from point A to that mythical, utopic point B, was so high, it would be double global GDP.

For those who missed it, here is an excerpt of what we wrote back on October 14, shortly after Bank of America published the definitive compendium on climate change and the coming Net Zero (i.e., great reset) world, and which we discussed in depth:

“while it is handy to have a centralized compendium of the data, a 5 minute google search can provide all the answers that are “accepted” dogma by the green lobby. But while we don’t care about the charts, that cheat sheets, or the propaganda, what we were interested in was the bottom line – how much would this green utopia cost, because if the “net zero”, “ESG”, “green” narrative is pushed so hard 24/7, you know it will cost a lot.

Turns out it does. A lot, lot.

Responding rhetorically to the key question, “how much will it cost?”, BofA cuts to the chase and writes $150 trillion over 30 years – some $5 trillion in annual investments – amounting to twice current global GDP!

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Climate adaptation: resilience, self-sufficiency and systems change

November 5, 2021

Climate adaptation: resilience, self-sufficiency and systems change

This weekend marks the beginning of COP26. After being delayed for nearly a year because of COVID, diplomats, scientists, corporate lobbyists, NGOs, students, demonstrators, corporations, heads of state, and many, many other invited and uninvited guests are already making their way to Glasgow Scotland for what has been projected to be the most consequential U.N. climate change conference since the Paris Agreement was struck in 2015.

Earlier this week, the Arkbound Foundation published a new anthology, “Climate Adaptation: Accounts of Resilience, Self-Sufficiency and Systems Change.” The following is a (significantly reduced) transcript of a discussion I hosted with three of the co-authors, Morgan Phillips, Carol Manetta, and Ashish Kothari. You can listen to the entire conversation on The Response podcast.

Morgan Phillips, UK co-director of the Glacier Trust, head of insight at Global Action Plan, and author of “Great Adaptations: In the Shadow of a Climate Crisis” (UK)
Carol Manetta, Executive Director of Reap Goodness (USA)
Ashish Kothari, Founding member of Kalpavriksh, co-coordinator of Vikalp Sangam and Global Tapestry of Alternatives, and a co-editor/author of several books including “Churning the Earth” and Pluriverse: A Post- Development Dictionary (India)

Tom Llewellyn: “Climate Adaptation” takes the perspective that socioeconomic collapse is probable. Rather than giving up hope, it seeks to outline ways people and communities can adapt to it. Morgan, can you talk about the challenges that are leading us towards socio-economic collapse and explain what adaptation is and what it currently looks like.

Morgan Phillips: That’s a big question. I’d start off by saying that socioeconomic collapse is obviously a possibility — unless dramatic action is taken. What’s quite certain is that things are going to change, and it’s really kind of up to us whether we change them or whether we’re changed by them.

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Climate Change and the Limits of Economic Growth

November 4, 2021

Climate Change and the Limits of Economic Growth

Shutterstock

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE LIMITS OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

If economic growth ushered in this era of climate change, how can economic growth also be part of the solution?

Since the nineteenth century, human society has experienced extraordinary but uneven economic growth thanks to the energy unleashed from fossil fuels. That growth, and the greenhouse gasses released from fossil-fuel use, has also created the current climate crisis. The conventional solution put forward to this crisis, a putative compromise between economic and environmental imperatives, has been to maintain economic growth but on the basis of sustainable energy sources.

Not all ecologists or economists are enthusiastic about this “green growth” alternative. According to these critical views, which have now begun to move into the mainstream, the planet simply can’t sustain the current pace of growth and even renewable energy sources like solar hit up against significant resource limits. The only effective way to control carbon emissions, as well as related problems of pollution and biodiversity loss, is to address “overshoot,” the unconstrained use of energy and material resources well beyond planetary limits, particularly in the richer parts of the world. These arguments pick up from some of the earliest computer modeling of resource limits highlighted in the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth report in 1972, but now with a climate crisis twist.

With the fiftieth anniversary of the Club of Rome report approaching, a number of scientists and economists gathered in early October to assess the current state of play of the zero-growth argument, its traction in the mainstream, and how best to call attention to the data supporting these positions. They looked at this question from various angles—physics, geology, biology, economy, ecology—and discussed the major obstacles to greater acceptance of more critical approaches to economic growth as well as ways of overcoming these obstacles.

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Permafrost: a ticking carbon time bomb

November 3, 2021

Permafrost: a ticking carbon time bomb

In Sweden's far north, permafrost beneath the Stordalen mire is up to thousands of years old — In Sweden’s far north, permafrost beneath the Stordalen mire is up to thousands of years old.

Sheltered by snow-spattered mountains, the Stordalen mire is a flat, marshy plateau, pockmarked with muddy puddles. A whiff of rotten eggs wafts through the fresh air.

Here in the Arctic in Sweden’s far north, about 10 kilometres (six miles) east of the tiny town of Abisko, global warming is happening three times faster than in the rest of the world.

On the peatland, covered in tufts of grass and shrubs dotted with blue and orange berries and little white flowers, looms a moonlander-like pod hinting at this far-flung site’s scientific significance.

Researchers are studying the frozen—now shapeshifting—earth below known as permafrost.

As Keith Larson walks between the experiments, the boardwalks purposefully set out in a grid across the peat sink into the puddles and ponds underneath and tiny bubbles appear.

The distinct odour it emits is from hydrogen sulfide, sometimes known as swamp gas. But what has scientists worried is another gas rising up with it: methane.

Carbon stores, long locked in the permafrost, are now seeping out.

Between carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, permafrost contains some 1,700 billion tonnes of organic carbon, almost twice the amount of carbon already present in the atmosphere.

With average temperatures rising around the Arctic, the permafrost has started to thaw.

Methane lingers in the atmosphere for only 12 years compared to centuries for CO2 but is about 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas over a 100-year period.

Thawing permafrost is a carbon “time bomb”, scientists have warned.

Vicious circle

In the 1970s, “when researchers first started showing up and investigating these habitats, these ponds didn’t exist”, says Larson, project coordinator for the Climate Impacts Research Centre at Umea University, based at the Abisko Scientific Research Station.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXI

November 2, 2021

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXI

So, dozens of political leaders, their hundreds of staff, multitudes of corporate leaders, and who knows how many ‘celebrities’ have all gathered in Glasgow, Scotland for an elite confab (#26) to discuss the ‘Climate Crisis’. Heaven knows how many resources have been extracted and pollutants dispersed in this latest political theatre (mostly? all? at taxpayer expense). The irony is not lost on many, except perhaps much of the mainstream media that tends to simply regurgitate political media releases and share simplistic narratives for exceedingly complex issues — it is indeed difficult to get someone to understand something if their income depends on them not understanding it.

Needless to say I expect little of substance to result from this event. In fact, I am increasingly seeing this event as an expo for marketing of ‘green/clean’ energy products (and making sure most? all? countries pursue purchasing them) that do not address our fundamental predicament — ecological overshoot — of which greenhouse gases is but one negative consequence (and not even the worst). And, of course, all of this provides the justification to create trillions of more dollars out of thin air (the debt held by a variety of the ruling class) that will be funnelled towards specific industries (owned by others of the ruling class) while doing little to reduce actual consumption or ecologically-destructive extraction industries.

This is increasingly looking not like a problem that can be solved but a predicament that may at best be mitigated on the margins. One of the most significant dilemmas, however, appears to be the ‘solutions’ that are being bandied about also appear to be the ones that will simply make the situation worse: increasing technology and complexities in the form of ‘renewables’.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Scientists Are Terrified

November 2, 2021

The Scientists Are Terrified

A survey of the world’s top climate researchers shows a stark finding: Most expect catastrophic levels of heating and damage soon—very soon.

woman looks at wildfires tearing through a forest in the region of Chefchaouen in northern Morocco on August 15, 2021. Smoke and flames rise in the background as she clasps her hands behind her head. — Photo: Fadel Senna/AFP (Getty Images)

A new Nature survey shows a majority of the world’s leading climate scientists expect “catastrophic” impacts in their lifetimes driven by rising greenhouse gas emissions. Brilliant researchers, they’re just like you and me—but with more data, which actually makes the new survey even more unnerving.

The feature from Nature, published on Monday, involved querying Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change researchers. These are the same folks who put out a major report earlier this year warning that this is essentially the most consequential decade in human history, one that will play a major role in deciding just how severe global warming will be for generations to come. In other words, they’re deep in it.

Nature heard back from 92 of the 233 living IPCC authors. The results show that six in 10 of the respondents expect the planet to warm at least 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius), a level that’s well beyond the Paris Agreement target of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). And it’s double the 1.5-degree-Celsius (2.7-degree-Fahrenheit) target that policymakers and researchers (including the IPCC) have identified as a relatively safe level of heating that would allow small islands to remain above sea level and protect millions from food insecurity and violence. Just 20% of the researchers, meanwhile, expect the world to meet the Paris Agreement 2-degree-Celsius target, and a paltry 4% think 1.5 degrees Celsius is in play.

Even more upsetting, 88% of the researchers expect climate change to unleash catastrophic impacts in their lifetimes. Of course, you could argue that’s already happening. Research has shown climate change is playing a role in making heat waves, wildfires, and cyclones worse…

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Code Red on FacingFuture.TV

November 2, 2021

Code Red on FacingFuture.TV

Photograph Source: Emertz76 – CC BY 2.0

FacingFuture.TV recently hosted a preview of the upcoming IPCC 2021 UN climate report, which report guides the gathering of dignitaries from around the world meeting in Glasgow this November to discuss, analyze, and decide how to deal with global warming/climate change.

According to the Code Red interview, the IPCC is taking off its ultra conservative facemask of prior years to reveal a surly cantankerous grim sneer on a darkened background. In short, climate change is much worse than the IPCC has previously been willing to admit.

The FacingFuture.TV interview features Mark Andersen, CEO of Strategic News Service, Brian Wright a natural medicine expert, and Peter Carter an IPCC expert reviewer. The threesome expressed dismay over the failure of the general public to “get the climate change message” clearly enough to force policymakers to take some kind of massive urgent all-hands-on-deck immediate without hesitation corrective measures to head off an undeviating course of surefire destruction.

The following snippets from that interview underscore a level of frustration and a sense of urgency as a clarion call for anybody and everybody to demand an immediate halt to fossil fuels.

What’s new with the IPCC?

For starters, according to Dr. Carter, the new report is a “definitive report.” Its conclusions are definite. In other words, the IPCC is taking the issue much more seriously than ever before. This is the first report to state that global climate change is “unequivocally caused by human activities.”

Moreover, previous IPCC reports inadvertently gave the impression that society has plenty of time until 2050 to make the necessary changes, which has unintentionally served to bolster the interests of the fossil fuel industry and extend forecasts for future production by the International Energy Agency.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

No Trucking Way

November 2, 2021

No Trucking Way

The financial economy and real economy used to live with each other happily: now they are in a long-distance relationship reliant on logistics to keep in touch. What happens when those logistics break down? (Very bad things, as I was discussing here the other day.)

We have covered the ocean-carrier side of this crisis (‘In Deep Ship’), and the new fee equivalent to $1m a day, and rising $1m each following day, for a 10,000 TEU vessel whose cargo is stuck in LA/LB port. However, we stressed in that report that the supply chain issue is more systematic. So, allow me to share quotes from an article exposing there is ‘No Trucking Way’ we are about to return to normal:

So when the coastal ports started getting clogged up last spring due to the impacts of COVID on business everywhere, drivers started refusing to show up. Congestion got so bad that instead of being able to do three loads a day, they could only do one. They took a 2/3 pay cut and most of these drivers were working 12 hours a day or more…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Forgotten, but not gone’:

November 2, 2021

‘Forgotten, but not gone’:

How governments have deliberately ignored the safety of contaminated sites in England – and why climate change makes this worse

‘The Metablog’,
No.18, Podcast:

This is an over thirty-year long story about my involvement with contaminated sites, and helping communities to get action to clean them up ^[1]. It’s innately connected to my home town, Banbury: An average small town, on the border between the Midlands and the South East; yet in the 1980s, this place taught me about the issues of waste disposal and land contamination. Not because it was exceptional, but because these issues affect almost every community across Britain.

Generations of my family have lived here, from at least the early Nineteenth Century. By word of mouth I learned about local industrial sites, what they did, and where their waste was buried.

The problem with today’s highly mobile society is that such local knowledge is increasingly rare; and before the late 1970s, records of waste or pollution releases were rarely kept. Despite warnings about the issues of contaminated land since the 1960s, governments have failed to act to create a comprehensive system to track down, assess, and where necessary decontaminate these sites.

Just like other major ecological issues – such as climate change – the obstacle to change are the economic vested interests that pressure decision-makers not to act. Valuing profit over the lives of ordinary people, they prevent effective action.

‘What’s past is prologue’

Climate change is important, but it has pushed other pressing ecological issues off the agenda. Like climate change, land contamination is a direct result of historic industrialisation. It is done. Now we have to manage those impacts. Unfortunately, climate change will make those impacts far worse.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Climate Alarmism an Establishment Attempt to Restore Social Control?

November 1, 2021

Is Climate Alarmism an Establishment Attempt to Restore Social Control?

Over the years, I’ve noticed pretty much every establishment attempt to push a climate agenda is accompanied by a call for people to unite. What if fear of change, of loss of control, and a desire for social unity and predictability are the real driving force behind the climate push?

Does the UK need a referendum on climate change pledges?

Critics say net-zero target has been imposed by ‘elites’ without electoral mandate

27 OCT 2021

A large proportion of the British public are in favour of a referendum on the government’s net-zero proposals, according to a new poll by YouGov.

…

The Tony Blair Institute’s Tim Lord rejected the idea that “elites” are behind the drive for climate action. He said “there is irony in this – as it is the poorest who will be most severely affected by unconstrained climate change”.

Lord agreed that the net-zero target was introduced in the summer of 2019 with minimal debate in the Commons and no mention of the plan in the 2017 election – but it was included in the Conservative manifesto ahead of the December 2019 election.

While delivering net zero is a “complex task” that “cannot be achieved without public support for both the overall goal, and the policies required to get there”, this “cannot mean everyone supports every measure”, he said. Consent must be drawn from a broad base and “net zero has to be based around a politics of unity, not division”.

…

Read more: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/954591/does-the-uk-need-a-referendum-on-net-zero-pledges

Here’s another call for unity;

Pope Francis praises youth activists in fight to tackle climate change

“It is said that you are the future, but in these matters, you are the present. You are those who are making the future today, in the present,” the pontiff said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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